Every civilization, even the most tyrannical, has its defining book, a legend or fairy tale that in times of conflict becomes cautionary. For Alexander’s Greece it was the Iliad, for the German Reich, the Götterdämmerung of the old sagas, via Wagner, for Thatcherite Britain, the nostalgic epics of Tolkien. It may be that for America today, that book is The Wizard of Oz.
(Link via Bookninja.)
